The website of embattled software maker The SCO Group was inaccessible again yesterday (26 August), fuelling reports of another denial-of-service attack.

SCO's main website, www.sco.com, was offline at 4am, according to UK-based internet monitoring company Netcraft. It remained unavailable at 9am today, 27 August.

Download this free guide

From forensic cyber to encryption: InfoSec17

Security technologist Bruce Schneier’s insights and warnings around the regulation of IoT security and forensic cyber psychologist Mary Aiken’s comments around the tensions between encryption and state security were the top highlights of the keynote presentations at Infosecurity Europe 2017 in London.

The site had just recovered from a crippling denial of service (DOS) attack that lasted throughout the weekend and for much of the business day on 25 August.

The outage prompted Netcraft to declare that SCO was again the target of a DOS attack. However, SCO said the site was inaccessible as a result of preventive measures being taken minimise the effects of future attacks.

The software company has been the target of animosity within the open-source community after it sued IBM for, among other things, alleged misappropriation of SCO's Unix source code for the Linux operating system.

In May, SCO went a step further, announcing that it was dropping its Linux software business. At the same time, the company warned commercial Linux suppliers that they might be liable for misuse of SCO's intellectual property.

The suit has angered the open-source software community because it threatens to undermine the growing popularity of Linux, casting doubt on the legal status of the operating system.

The weekend DOS attack followed a similar attack in May and was probably launched by individuals within the open-source community, according to Eric Raymond, president of Open Source Initiative.

Following the attacks last weekend, Raymond and other open-source advocates condemned the actions and appealed to those within the community to stop attacking SCO's website.

"It was surprising to me that it happened and don't think it will happen again," he said. "We're ethical people."

0 comments

Register

Login

Forgot your password?

Your password has been sent to:

By submitting you agree to receive email from TechTarget and its partners. If you reside outside of the United States, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Privacy